Why do Gerbils eat their young?

Gerbils are known to consume their young and other rodents. It is complex to interpret this gruesome activity, but there are some explanations.

Gerbils cannot resist assaulting and eating their young citizens. The female herself may have been runt or heavily ill and lost weight.

During pregnancy, the mother can go hungry and decide to eat one or because it has so many young and maybe there is another litter on the way. The gerbil parent never kills all her young ones, though.

Do Gerbils Always Eat Their Young?

But the gerbil killing his young is an unusual phenomenon. It's not every occasion a gerbil gives birth to and eats it.

It occurs only rarely in the following conditions. What's not odd is the mother gerbil feasting on its young after killing it.

Why Do Gerbils Eat Their Young?

The urge for a gerbil to eat its baby is genetic, and also they are nutritional. The mother determines the other litters will survive by sacrificing one or two pups.

It is not true that a mother murders her young without a motive. The father will even attack the babies and kill them.

Or the 'perpetrator' may not have been the mom and dad, but a gerbil of the same family. Here are a few explanations why Gerbils eat their offspring.

If the gerbils have huge numbers   

Gerbils are forced to kill their young if they have huge numbers. Gerbils give birth between two and six litters.

A mother can give birth to more offspring than she can in a go. Although the record for the largest gerbil group is uncertain, more is probable.

When this happens, the mother and the father can't take care of all the young. It's so much work, and the parents don't have time to look after any of them.

Parents will require time to maintain and sustain themselves too. Alternatively, the parents can make the litter more 'manageable' by sacrificing one or two. This ensures that the mother will feed all the surviving babies easily.

If a mother gerbil gives birth to many babies 

When a mother gerbil gets a litter, one of her first actions is to have a partner again. This implies that, with little time lost, the mother will continuously produce several offspring.

The gerbil mother can achieve this in two, three, or four days. For tiny animals in the wild, this is the best way to breed since it creates too many offspring. 

Small mammals are so rapidly predated that the development of the next productive generation needs many young people. Even so, before it's meant to, it's likely that the female will give birth to a new litter. The mother can stall the birth for a moment, but often not for long.

The mother would have way too many pups to eat happens. Rather, it (eats) can kill a handful of the second litter to support the rest of the two litters.

Lack of food

When the mother gives birth to her, she makes a nest. She takes the young to this nest where they live the first week cooped up inside.

She feeds her young with milk at this period. This week, neither the young nor the mother will step out of the nest. This tremendously pressures the mother. Throughout that time, she can't eat because she's too busy looking after her babies.

But it takes extra energy for the mother to provide a lot of milk. The mother would not be energetic till she weans the babies.

This could bring her to near hunger. The mother and the rest of the pups will live when they eat one or two of the pups, particularly from a big litter.

Underdeveloped young ones

Sometimes a baby is less well-formed than other babies in a litter. This is a simple reality, and the explanations for it are not obvious.

But if a baby is born smaller than the others, it means it will remain smaller. The other babies will harass it. They can deny it access to food. This is unfortunate for the gerbil owner, but the will to feed and preserve food for its own motivates is worth it.

They count any milk or treatment given to the smallest one as a loss. The runt is likely to become too frail to survive, though. 

The instinct of the mother is to kill the runt and concentrate on the other pups. This may sound tragic, but wild animals make much sense.

The role of the mother is to get as many good young as possible and transfer their genes. It will never turn the good ones into stable adults if it wastes time, raising a poorly developed litter. Conversely, time and food should be managed properly.

1. Poor health of the mother after pregnancy
2. Pregnancy and watching over the young is hard enough for your gerbil. If the mother is sick during this period, things will get even worse. If a gerbil is sick, she:
3. Can't be as active as she would want to.
4. Can't easily find food as she desires.
5. Can't communicate with and separate from other gerbils to deter disease transmission.

The gerbil mother wouldn't have had anything to eat if she was significantly sick. The production of milk exacerbates this dilemma and the second litter along the way. The mother may eat the weakest baby shortly after giving birth to make up for the lack of food.

Poor health of the litter

A pup can also be born unhealthy. Many circumstances of health can affect the pups. All these will lead to a much lesser chance of survival for a dog. The mother can opt to knock it down and eat it as it looks like the pup won't get better.

Stress

Stress makes creatures and humans weird. It does unusual things to animals in ways that might seem abnormal or even inappropriate.

It does the same with gerbils and can force them to eat their young. The issues below can overwhelm gerbils:

1. Excessive touching and close connections such as cuddling.
2. Powerful lights and noisy sounds.
3. Many people going subsequently to their cages.
4. Many gerbils in the same habitat or the cage being too small to hold a fair group of gerbils.
5. Many group challenges (declanning).
6. You can remedy any of these stresses.

Declanning

During declanning, gerbils will fight and destroy one another. Declanning is the division of the gerbil community or clan. In the wild, one or more gerbils would start a group of their own.

This is not achievable in confinement, but declanning triggers wars.

Gerbils are hostile and during these battles. They use their sharp teeth to fight and will 'box,' slap each other, too. The young gerbils are a common source of such troubles. 

When a competing gerbil sees a young breeding pair, it might be envious. So, it will attack the young and kill one or several of them. This is a common phenomenon in large gerbil communities.

This shows it could not have been the mother gerbil who killed its young. It could have been another gerbil in the community. This would not happen, of course, if you shelter the young with only their parents.

If the baby is already dead

It is also likely sometimes that the pup is already dead. Not all gerbil mothers sacrifice their young ones and feed on them.

Sometimes the pup dies of natural causes, and the mother eats it afterward. The mother will immediately eat the baby if it is born dead. This happens frequently.

Therefore, gerbil litters are big and some of them are often of stillbirth. For a large litter, many gerbils will grow to maturity. The mother may also eat its offspring when the gerbil has been sick and died.

Do Male Gerbils Eat Their Babies?

Male gerbils can kill their babies or their enemies. It's a different explanation for the mother, though. Often the male will kill its young to lure the female back into heat.

It will then mate again to make another litter with the female.

Why Do Gerbils Eat Their Babies after Killing Them?

Some reasons were that the baby might not survive at all. Thus, killing it preserves resources that can be extended to healthy and more stable pups. So, why does the mother eat her young?

Wouldn't killing her babies be enough? It strains the mother's body to raise the pups. The mother cannot consume as much as she would want because a lot of the food she eats makes more milk.

The unfortunate truth is that something worse would happen to the baby's body if the mother doesn’t eat it immediately. Something else would eat it. The mother can gain more nutrition in milk, at least by eating its dead baby. The mother still needs to keep the burrow/nest safe.

A dead animal can cause an infection. So, eating its young is also an act of cleaning up and taking advantage of food that could otherwise have gone to waste. These traits apply more to wild gerbils but are passed on to the domesticated ones too.

Other Questions

How Do You Know When Your Gerbil Is About To Give Birth? 

Some gerbils have a 'pear-shaped' look while they are pregnant. The lower half of their body is wider than the upper part. Look at your gerbil from above to see if it has gained weight at the bottom half.

If it is so and your gerbil has recently interacted with a male, know that it will soon build a nest.

They make their nests at the last moment as a sign that birth is imminent. Gerbils will exhibit nesting behavior at an impending birth, so watch out for those signs.

Can You Touch Baby Gerbils?

Don't carry the pups until they're a week old. When they have a fine fur layer, they are healthy to touch. Consider cuddling them every day while they are still young, so they become accustomed to humans and tamed.

When you carry pups for the first time, get a little cardboard to stop their parents from seeing you.

Treat the babies with concern. Baby gerbils can hop or run out of control fast and quickly. Place the whole baby in your hand when lifting it out of the cage and hold it over a soft surface in case you slip.

How Do You Tell If A Gerbil Is A Boy Or Girl?

Adult male gerbils have conspicuous testes beneath the tails. It is more difficult to find out the gender of gerbils that are less than seven weeks old.

When you raise a gerbil's tail, you will see a tiny patch with no fur; on males, this patch is further away than on females.

Place the gerbil in your left hand and raise it with your tail. It's a male when its anus and urethra are further apart, and it's a female when they're nearby. Females have visible breasts, and the males have a clear bump at the bottom of their tail (scrotum). The smell of the males is even greater in their gut.